Swedish blog
Stockholm
Stayed the first three nights (and later, the sixth night) with Markus, an ex-CSer of mine, and his Chinese girlfriend Effy in their nice big apartment, only 20 minutes from the city centre. Stockholm turned out to be a wonderful, bustling city - the nicest of all the Scandinavian capitals IMO, and I was so glad I gave myself 5 full days there. Here's a brief run-down of what I saw:
*Gamla Stan - the old city - a mixture of medieval looking streets and buildings but full of souvenir shops all run by shady-looking Middle Eastern guys.
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| Square in Gamla Stan |
*The Royal Palace, where I was lucky enough to witness a military parade, complete with one of the best navy bands I have ever heard. Even while marching they never fluffed a note or played out of time or key.
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| The Navy Band |
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| The guys were in a hurry to get home. |
*The Vasamuseet - probably the city's greatest attraction - which
houses the Vasa, an enormous wooden warship that sank in Stockholm Harbour 20 minutes into her maiden voyage in 1628. It was salvaged in 1961 but spent 15 years or so being restored (they're still working on the interior). It is totally unique and 98% of it apparently is authentic. The huge ship is festooned with beautiful statues and gilded carvings. I spent two hours at the museum, not only marvelling at the awe-inspiring vessel but learning about its manufacture, the reasons for its sinking (bad design ordered by a wanky king) and interesting facts about 17th century seamen (keep it clean please).
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| Awesome! |
*The brand-new ABBA museum, only 5 weeks old, where you learn about every aspect of Sweden's greatest musical export: the story of each of the band members, how they came together, their rise to fame (and how important Australia was in this), their costumes, videos, sound, world tours - you name it. It's very hands-on and high-tech too. You can remix their music, record yourself singing to their backing and participate in a projected song performance with your head on one of the band member's bodies. (Could have great trans-gender possibilities.) I loved every minute of it, as did the other smiling and nostalgia-filled baby-boomers filling the place. Cynically, however, I couldn't help thinking of one the groups' hits all the time I was there : "Money, Money, Money". (Entrance fees, audio visual guides and souvenirs were not cheap!) Still, good luck to them. They deserve it. "Thank You For the Music" ABBA!
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| Pretending to be Agnetha |
*The Nordic Museum, dedicated to the cultural history and ethnography of Sweden from 1520 to the present. It had exhibits on every aspect of Swedish life though the ages, including furniture, clothing, food, clocks, even toys, all contained in a grand, palace-like building. Pity the whole thing was boring. (Not interesting enough for a pic.)
*Skansen - a vast open-air museum with historical buildings brought in from all parts of Sweden and Norway to show what life was like in ages past. It also had a zoo featuring animals found in the Scandinavian wild, including reindeer (of course), bears, moose, boars, lynxes, foxes and bison. All through the historical section people dressed in period costume were plying their trades, baking bread, weaving cloth, printing, forging metal and so on, all the time talking with the tourists. Very interesting.
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| A pretty country house in a pretty setting at Skansen. |
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| There's a bear in there at Skansen. |
Friday afternoon I went to my second hosts, Brita and Anders, who live outside of Stockholm on an island. (Brita is the sister of a host whom I shall be visiting on the 18th.) The couple also have a farm in the countryside where they hunt game and grow all their own fruit and vegetables. They welcomed me with a delicious meal of roasted wild boar and salad, followed by rhubarb pie - all their own products of course - which we ate in the front garden, being eaten ourselves by giant mosquitos, the size of small birds. (A bit of an exaggeration, but it seemed that way.)
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| Brita and Anders about to serve me a delicious wild boar repast. |
On Monday I took a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride over to Visby, on the island of Gotland, south of Stockholm. It's a medieval walled city dating back to the 12th century, so culturally precious that it's on the UNESCO World Heritage List. I was enchanted by the cobblestone lanes, the stone "ring wall" (all 3.6 ks of it), with its many fortresses that had been built for protection against the Danish, Germans and various pirates. (The place has had a stormy past.) There are also dozens of ruins of churches and other interesting buildings scattered around the island, which I was not able to see unfortunately, being carless.
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| Beautiful Visby, Gotland |
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| Part of the ancient wall that surrounds Visby. |
On the third day of my Gotland sojourn I organised with a taxi company, at enormous expense, a private tour of the nearby northern island of Fårö. The island is pretty barren and only 600 people live there, but it is famous for its Langhammar nature reserve in the north-west that features colourful rocky beaches and weird-looking Ice Age stone monoliths known as
rauks. Langhammar was the setting for Ingmar Bergman's film Through a Glass Darkly, so it's of particular interest to movie buffs like yours truly. The tour was fantastic and the
rauks were out-of-this-world, as you can see by the pictures. I was intrigued by some of the place names on the island, like Fårskinn (pronounced foreskin). I didn't like the idea of living there - you'd feel cut off. (Ouch!)
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| Rauks on Fårö. Is that weird or what? |
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| More weird rock formations on Fårö. This one's called The Dog, for obvious reasons. |
Darlanar
It took me a ferry ride, two buses and three trains to get there but I finally made it to Rättvik on Lake Siljan in the Darlanar (The Dales) region of central Sweden. I wasn't planning to go there but several people told me I should. And since I was let down badly by a CS host who informed me at the last minute he couldn't take me in Gränna (near a lake in the south), I took the opportunity to alter my plans. The day I arrived was the last day of school and I witnessed first-hand the Swedish version of Schoolies. The Year 12 students dress up very elegantly: the girls in short white dresses, the boys in long pants and dark jackets with everyone wearing the traditional white, black-rimmed student cap. They march or parade around town on the back of trucks drinking champagne, shouting and blowing whistles and hooters. (And there's nothing I like better than pretty Swedish schoolgirls with large hooters.) I saw this from every train station I pulled into. I couldn't take a picture as my camera was locked in my bag, but here's a couple from the Internet:
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| Swedish Schoolies |
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| Obviously not sad that school is over! |
Due to the lateness of my decision to come here I wasn't able to find a cheap hotel at Rättvik, so I had to make do with a hostel. It wasn't bad. The owner was very nice and the place was large, well-set up, clean and almost empty. But you still had to walk down the hall for a pee or a shower, or both together (oops - sprung!). There was lots to see at Rättvik but not having a car restricted me greatly. I wanted to get out into the countryside to see the delights of this region that is famous for its "folksy" traditions - its art-bedecked farm houses, folk lore, arts and crafts (including the famous red dala horse, the symbol of Sweden), music and so on. Here's a picture of the famous carved wooden horse. (Actually it does nothing for me, but who cares? Tourists buy the expensive little things by the bucket loads.)
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| A Dalarna horse that everyone who visits Sweden has to buy. |
The next day (Saturday) I took a train to Mora, near which lies the little village of Nusnäs where the Dala horses are made. To my great disappointment I discovered that buses don't run there on weekends (how stupid is that!) and the workshops close
at 1 pm on a Saturday. I'd arrived too late, even if I'd tried to negotiate a price with a taxi driver, which was my plan. It wasn't a total loss, however. At Mora is a museum on the life and works of Anders Zorn, Sweden's most famous 19th-20th century artist. (Actually their most famous artist, period.) I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of him, but the museum was a revelation. The man was a genius, and I absolutely loved his paintings. Definitely a joyful discovery for me. Here's a sample of his impressionist-influenced works. It's typical in that glorifies the female nude in a natural setting (he hated studio portraits) and uses light and reflections in a striking way:
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| A lovely Dalarna lass bathing. Sadly I didn't see any like this when I was there. |
Sunday was grey and drizzly, which put paid to my walking-round-the-lake plans. Instead I took a bus to Falun, the "Capital of the Dalarna" region one hour away, to see one of Sweden's most visited museums - you guessed it, the Dalarna Museum. There I learnt more than I needed to know about the region's unique history and folk arts (textiles, wall paintings, copper and leather work etc.). The only trouble was that it was all in Swedish, with no English translations - the first such museum I'd come across. The dictionary in my iPod got quite a workout, I can tell you. "Here is a picture of weaver Anders Oluffsen, proudly showing off his enormous...[type, type, type]...hand loom." In the surprisingly cheap gift shop I finally succumbed and bought myself a little Dalahäst (horse), but blue, not the traditional red - a colour I hate. It cost about $25, a lot cheaper than I'd seen in other shops. My little Dalarna Darling shall stand beside my computer as a permanent reminder of my visit to Sweden.
Falun is also famous for its copper mine (now closed) that provided employment to Swedes for centuries, so I walked out to the huge hole in the ground just outside the city to take a gander. Very impressive. I decided not to go through the museum though, having worn out my thumbs and my iPod's battery at the last one. Besides, I always find mining museums the pits. (His humour is reaching new depths.)
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| Remnants of the copper mine. |
Returning home that Sunday night my tongue was hanging out for a drink so I went to the local Systembolgaet at 4pm to buy something and it was closed, can you believe it? I haven't explained what these Systembolgaets are yet. In Scandinavia you can't just go to a bottle shop, hotel or supermarket to buy grog; you have to go to a state-owned shop that has a total monopoly on the sale of alcohol. The good points: the prices are reasonable, the quality and range is excellent (they have many wines from Australia and NZ) and the sales advice is great. The bad points: they are scarce, they are always full and they have restricted opening times - closing hour is often 6pm and they are closed on Sundays. I think the idea is to limit binge drinking, but the locals tell me that it's not working. Well, it certainly worked on me that Sunday night! : > (
Fjällbacka
After 3 nights in the Darlarna and one overnight stop in a B&B in Gothenburg I travelled north through gorgeous green countryside speckled white with grazing sheep to the little western coastal fishing village of Fjällbacka for another three night stay. Why? you may ask. Well Fjällbacka is one of Sweden's little treasures, oozing ambience like you wouldn't believe. It's not only famous for its beauty and charm but also for its association with the actress Ingrid Bergman who with her husband set up their summer house on a nearby island (of which there are hundreds). It reminded me in look and feel of the village in 'Murder She Wrote' - a comparison which is quite fitting because one of Sweden's top female crime writers, Camilla Läckberg, comes from Fjällbacka and sets many of her murders there (I can't say I'd ever heard of her so I bought her first book on line from the Kindle store and started reading it on my iPad.)
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| Charming Fjällbacka. The picture doesn't do it justice. |
The hotel I stayed in was interesting. Very olde worlde, it was refurbished to the theme of an old fictitious and randy sea captain with a girl in every port and each room bore the name of one of these maidens. I was lodged in Ilse, so to speak. In keeping with the captain's bawdy nature, the bathroom was adorned with explicit pictures from the Khama Sutra. (A fitting place to keep dirty pictures.) The bath tub was a piece of work. A kind of hip bath, I didn't know whether to sit or stand in it. And getting in took me forever. I was scared I'd slip and injure my privates. When I finally lowered myself to sit at the bottom of it I was laughing hysterically, thinking I wouldn't be able to do this in the nursing home (next year). Suddenly the laughing stopped. F**k! I'd forgotten the shampoo. I had to heave myself up out of that deep well with nothing to hold on to, step out with my wet feet on the slippery concrete floor, get the shampoo and get back in again I decided to see the girl at the desk and arrange a portable crane to be brought in for the next two nights. The tub is a disaster waiting to happen. It's great for doing washing though. I did a whole bag of my greys and browns (they used to be my whites) in it. I'm sure the maid had a heart attack when she saw the three lines of washing strung up in the bathroom the next day. The place looked like a Chinese laundry!
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| The killer bathtub |
My activities in Fjällbacka were dictated by the weather. As rain was predicted on Thursday I decided to do a boat ride on Wednesday to an island called Storö-Ramnö, which is part of a nature reserve. The ride to the island took 30 minutes, after which they left you to wander around with a useless map, clambering up and down the rocks trying not to break your neck, all the while admiring the exotic plants, birds, seals and so on, all of which unfortunately were hiding themselves from me that day. I managed to pass a couple of stressful hours risking life and limb after which I sat down to regain my composure (and balance), boozing in the small hotel till the boat returned.
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| What I clamboured over for two hours. It's a wonder I didn't break my neck! |
While I was sitting imbibing I met an Australian couple who had spent the night on the island (why, I have no idea - there's nothing there) and we agreed to meet for dinner that night back on the mainland. This was to be a very costly mistake. They had a kind of package deal which included a fancy three-course meal. I stupidly said "I'll have what they're having" and by the time a beer was added and a glass of mediocre Chilean pinot noir (at $18 a glass!) my bill came to the equivalent of $98. This has to be a personal record for a restaurant meal. Much more of this and I'd be prematurely returning home to Australia penniless!
As predicted, Thursday was rainy and miserable, so I just veged out, sleeping and reading my new Läckberg novel, enjoying the fact that I recognised many of the place names in it. In the afternoon it fined up enough to allow me to climb the stairs to the top of the rocky hill overlooking the town and to wander the narrow streets, looking at all the cute houses. There were almost no tourists, and like everywhere I'd been the past week, both in Gotland and the Dalarna, the place was dead. Tourist season starts in earnest
on June 15th apparently. It made me wonder how these people can survive during the 9-month off-season. (By charging $98 for an evening meal, obviously.)
Gothenburg
My four days in Gothenburg, Sweden's second biggest city, were fabulous. My CS host Mats (61) was very kind and accommodating. He not only showed my all over his lovely city but took me to the beautiful island of Marstrand on one day and on another to the northern archipelageo where we took a ferry and island-hopped in glorious summer weather. Only one day did it rain and that afternoon we spent at a couch surfing meeting so it didn't really matter. Mats is a passionate music lover and we spent many enjoyable hours watching recordings of Swedish singers and musicians in grand settings like royal palaces and the Oslo Town Hall for the Nobel peace prize ceremony. Being a true Swede, Mats is a keen ABBA fan and his lovely house was always filled with their songs. (Bloody hard to get to sleep at night though, with "Mamma Mia" refusing to leave your brain. Curse their catchy melodies!) Here are some pics of my Gothenburg experience.
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| Marstrand from the mainland. Beautiful! |
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| Mats at Marstrand |
Halmstad
My next port of call, the coastal city of Halmstad, was basically to catch up with Barbro, an ex-Couch Surfer of mine who had stayed with me five years ago. Cunningly, I planned to be with her from the 18th to the 23rd so that I could celebrate with someone I knew two important events: my 64th birthday on the 19th and Midsommer Eve on the 21st. (Midsommer, the next day, is basically a sleep day to get over the afternoon before.) The first couple of days were spent relaxing, drinking, talking about old times, drinking, playing scrabble, drinking and eating. (Oh, did I mention drinking?) On the 20th Barbro took me to Felsberg where she works (a beatiful historic little town) and I helped her daughter Eva and son-in-law Fredrik move furniture out of the flat she had there where she usually slept during the week. She had decided to give the flat up and commute each day to work from Halmstad, 30 minutes away. Eva and Fredrik and their two delightful young children stayed with us till Sunday. The adults both spoke fluent English (who doesn't here?) and I shared an enjoyable barbecue (where I tasted Moose for the first time - yum!) and many interesting stories with them.
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| The obscenely cute grandchildren, Julie and Carl |
On Friday afternoon, Barbro, her friend Elizabeth and I went out into the countryside to celebrate Midsommer Eve with friends. This day is Sweden's second biggest celebration after Christmas and has many traditions associated with it. Usually the local community gathers and dances and sings around a maypole, some wearing traditional folk costumes or crowns made of wildflowers on their heads. It was very enjoyable and I was surprised to see that people of all ages (including teenagers, whom I thought would have thought it uncool) were involved. The evening meal at Barbro's also contained many traditional aspects, as Wikipedia explains: "The year's first potatoes, soused herring and pickled herring, chives, sour cream, beer, snaps and the first strawberries of the season are on the menu. Drinking songs (snapsvisor) are also important at this feast, and many drink heavily." (Of course I forced myself to submit to the latter celebratory requirement!)
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| Dancing round the junepole, sorry, maypole |
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| Barbro and Elizabeth waiting to start the traditional Midsommer Eve meal. See if you can see the various items mentioned above. |
On Saturday, a public holiday when everybody tries to get over the revelry of the day before, I went to Helsingborg, an hour south of Halmstad. The weather was not too good for walking around and seeing the sights, so I decided to take the ferry to Elsinor (or Helsingör in Swedish) on the northeast coast of Zealand, Denmark, which is only 20 minutes away. This little Medieval city is known internationally for its castle Kronborg, where Shakespeare's play Hamlet is set. I figured if it was going to rain, this would be the sensible place to go. However, by the time I got to Elsinor it had cleared up and I spent three pleasant hours walking the cobbled streets and checking out the castle. I then returned to Helsingborg and checked out its sights (both of them) then had a nice Italian meal before getting the train home to Halmstad. A very nice day.
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| A tug boat in the harbour at Elsingor. Note the Kronborg palace in the background. |
Swedish Lapland
After Malmö I flew up to the mining town of Kiruna, in Swedish Lapland for another taste of the Midnight Sun. Why, you may wonder, after I'd already seen it in Finland. I wondered myself. It was probably a mistake but a good one. I'd had enough of busy towns and a four-day stint in the wilderness was just what I needed. Kiruna is interesting. Iron ore mining began there in the 1900s and because they are drilling diagonally under it, the town is subsiding and has to be moved 2 kilometres eastwards lock, stock and barrel within 15 years - which will cost billions of course, but this is just a blip in the mining company's annual profits. Kiruna is also a popular winter destination for skiing, dogsledding, snow mobile riding, ice climbing etc. During the winter you can also stay at an ice hotel and see the Northern Lights. So the place really rocks at Christmas time; it was dozing when I was there.
Here's a quick run-down on what I did at Kiruna:
Day 1 - the tour company took us into the woods to a cabin where the young English-born guide James cooked us a delicious three-course meal - reindeer on rye, salmon, and cloudberries with vanilla sorbet - which I enjoyed more than many of the meals I'd paid a fortune for in fancy restaurants in Sweden. We ate the meal as the giant mosquitoes ate us. (They are enormous, and ferocious in Lapland. Luckily I'd brought insect repellant which kept them at bay). After our meal we drove up a mountain for a spectacular view of the town, the Torne River, the surrounding mountains and of course the midnight sun, which unfortunately only partly showed itself. (Still, much more than at North Cape in Norway where it was totally hidden by clouds.)
Day 2 - The morning tour was through the world's biggest underground mine, half a kilometre down. Through exhibits of enormous equipment, films, slide shows and multimedia presentations we leant about every aspect of the iron mining process. Absolutely oresome. The afternoon activities began with a trip to a Sami (the indigenous Lapp people) settlement where we met an elder and reindeer herder who talked about the Sami ways. We were supposed then to feed the reindeer but they'd been gorging themselves all day on tourist tucker that they turned their snouts up at ours. After this we went on a testicle-freezing boat ride along the river to a small wooded island where we had another delicious meal (cooked by the German-born guide Michael) around a camp fire in a small cabin. Guess what the main meal was...yep, Rudolph stew.
Day 3 - a bit of a disaster really, because of the inclement weather. We drove north to the Abisko National Park situated in a high mountainous area not far from the border with Norway. Young James tried his best to make the trip interesting ("Behind the clouds you would normally see...") but it was to no avail. We were supposed to do a hike along a raging stream for an hour but the rain restricted us to about 20 minutes. Still, the fish-soup meal by the fire in a cabin was nice.
Day 4 - did a morning guided tour of the famous Icehotel in a little village east of Kiruna. The hotel itself doesn't get built till December but they have a couple of rooms plus the bar in a refrigerated building for use all year round. It was fascinating to see how they made the ice blocks (beautifully clear, not white) from the Tourne River and also the ice glasses used in the bar. Apparently they have 5 different types of rooms in ascending degrees of spoofiness. The most expensive rooms (with hand-carved ice furniture and works of art on the walls) can cost $1000 a night. I'm not sure I'd be able to sleep there - the reindeer fur bedecked beds felt bloody cold to me. (You sleep in a sleeping bag on top apparently). You wouldn't want to spend too much time in the Icebar before turning in. Going to the loo in the -5 degree cold
at 3am would be no fun. (I'd probably just wet the bed - at least you'd be warm for a while.)
So that, my friends, basically ends my Swedish holiday and my Scandinavian adventure. Tomorrow I fly back to Stockholm then straight on to Paris to meet my sister and cousin
on Monday morning for the next part of my 6-month adventure. So far no mishaps or disasters, only nice experiences. Long may they last!
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